What to do with ol' Athearn Chemical tank cars

[iomalley]

Hello Gents;

I recently acquired 3 or 4 of the old Athearn 40' chemical tank cars from a recent swap meet.  I always liked these cars from when my dad ran a Hooker one around the layout.

My era is 1978 to 1983 so the validity of these cars still being in service was waning.  I did find a few plausible examples to bring them as close to 1978 as possible.

The first one is this Cyanide car.  The precipice being the newly released decal set from Highball for the 11k cars from Atlas.

highballgraphics.com/F-345.htm

 I did find a pic of ACFX 3544 which is a close match to this car, but not 100%.  Just need to finish up the ladders, couplers and black painted railings and details.  The car also had a large placard mounted to the railing that told passers by and emergency crews what to do in the event of a tank leak.  I thought that kinda hilarious when the fire truck rolls up to the scene..."Hey newbie, Take a deep breath and go read the placard and tell me what it says!"




Up next is an EBAX car done up in the ETHYL scheme, probably anti-knock compound scheme.  The last one will be a CASCO corn syrup car.  Stay tuned!

[PVRR 2647]

Sean~

You could always assign a couple of them to MoW for use as firefighting cars, I recall Comox hauled a tank car around Vancouver Island with their 4097 in the late 1970's, for firefighting purposes.

PVRR2647

[tankcarsrule]

These chemical tank cars are LPG cars. They don't have a manway or bottom outlet, but have a bonnet with inlet and outlet valves. Cyanide is in gas form, so that car is correct. Many of these cars were refitted with manways and bottom outlets, which would add variety.

Regards, Bobby

[tjmfishing]

Could always build water transporter cars

[iomalley]

Its on the list, but I have an old AHM(?) for that one. Very similar but with a larger dome.

[tankcarsrule]

Dec 28, 2015 16:56:13 GMT -5 iomalley said:

Its on the list, but I have an old AHM(?) for that one. Very similar but with a larger dome.


It's not a dome, it's a bonnet. And yes, there's a big difference. A dome is for liquids, a bonnet is for gases. as I stated before, a bonnet contains valves for loading and unloading. You can change the bonnet for a manway and install a bottom drain, otherwise there's no way to fill the car and unload liquids. An easy
mod to make a different looking car.

[iomalley]

Thanks Bobby. I knew there was a difference, but thought is was just protection for different valving.

Here's the Cyanide car, ladders added, and I changed the trucks to RBs given the serious cargo



Here's the next one, a Ethyl anti-knock car...



Taylor, this one will probably be the water transporter. I needs alot of work to the crude deck boards and cast on brake gear...and of course adding the heater.

[tjmfishing]

What are you thinking for the heater? I just added in the vent/stack at the top as I couldn't find a real obvious photo showing the heater details. As for the brake wheel - yeah shave that off - but the running boards on mine didn't look too bad when I was done but I shaved off the details cast underneath incl triple valve, air reservoir and brake cylinder. On top of that change the stirrups and you should be good to go.